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The Fix for a Dog That Plays Keep Away

Does Your Dog Play Keep Away?

This video is all about how to fix your dog who plays keep away and how I solved this problem when Keeper plays keep away with us.
Leila and I love to play fetch or kickball with Keeper. Kickball is her thing. She’ll kick the tennis ball out into the back yard.
He’ll fetch it and return and bring it back and drop it, and she’ll rinse and repeat that whole activity with him. He loves it.

Keeper Tries To Control the Ball and Play Keep Away

We love to do that just as much as any other dog owner does with their dog. But sometimes with a bossy dog, the desire to keep the ball, yes, even with Keeper, becomes too great a temptation. The game of play keep away begins.

You don’t want trying to have him give up the ball to turn into a game of cat and mouse, which is exactly what your dog or Keeper would love to do. Keeper typically does it after about three or four throws.

Play KeepAway Options if Your Dog Won’t Release the Ball

Assuming your dog is not tired after three or four throws, you could bribe him with a treat right to end the play keep away ?Nope, that won’t work because the game itself should be the reward.
If you start using food treats, he’ll drop the ball and come back to you and get the treat, and then you’ll
have to go get the ball.

You could walk away and end the game which then makes the ritual of keeping just out of your reach – pointless.Nah. Keeper will hang onto it and come back over and drop it at my feet, and then as I go to grab the
ball to put it up until I want to play again, he may try to grab it and play keep-away with me at that
point.

What totally works for Keeper, my very observant dog, very bossy dog, and his ploy to play keep away
Leila and I keep a spare ball up there on the washing machine or the dryer in the utility room. When
we ask Keeper to go find his ball so we can begin the game, he’ll hop up on there and show me where
the ball is.

We’ll get the orange ball and then we’ll get a spare ball. We’ll put that in our pocket.
Now, he KNOWS there’s a spare ball!
Keeper knows that I have my own spare ball and I don’t need his, when I ask him to drop it,
he went back to dropping the ball to resume the game.

Now, I ask you, how smart is that? So he’s bossy and smart! He’s figured it out though.

Give this a try with whatever your dog plays keep away with and see how it works. You MIGHT have to use a little imagination depending on what your dog “decides to own” but just give it a little thought and “outsmart” your dog As always, with a bossy dog, the best thing to do is develop a relationship with your dog through training. Read this and learn more good training

Multiple Dog Crazies – 3 Tips

Dealing with multiple dogs can be a daunting task. When Leila and I got married we combined 7 dogs and 1 cat! It could have been a disaster but we immediately set about putting rules and boundaries into place so my 4 dogs and her 3 dogs would do well together. Her cat, well Petie cat just ruled the roost from day 1 !

Everything worked out well because of the rules and structure we put into place. If you don’t have dog rules, stuff happens and things can get a little crazy.

3 things you can do to stop multiple dog crazies.

I’ve got my sanity list right here.

Multiple Dog Crazy Tip # 1: Teach Sit
Teach a solid sit to each dog individually. You can not do this as a “group” exercise.
Require them to earn everything in your house by giving you at least a simple sit. This has huge benefits and an easy command to teach
By teaching them to sit individually, you begin to develop a working relationship with each dog individually. That creates listening from Each dog.

Multiple Dog Crazy Tip # 2: Patience
Sometimes the dog gets it, sometimes they don’t.
When doling out food treats, if you have three dogs, give one a treat, pet the other two, but don’t give them food treats necessarily.Teach them that they don’t always get what they want when they want it. That’s important!
Control doorways. This is another thing that teaches patience.
They need to be patient going out to the backyard to go potty. If you’ve got three dogs, once again, make them sit and send each one out separately and individually.
A lot of dog fights start in tight spaces, so control the going out and your coming in. Your exits and your entrances to your home because that’s where a lot of fights start.

Multiple Dog Crazy Tip # 3 Deferment
What do I mean by deferment? That means stay out of my personal space. If dogs don’t respect your personal space, you’re not the leader.
They’re jumping all over you, getting into your space on your lap. Always invite them up. That’s important.
Require them to sit. Did I mention that? And only one dog at a time. We don’t want them piling on.

It’s all about teaching deferment. When you’re walking around the house, use lower body language, waist down, to gently nudge them and make them move out of your personal space. One thing you can do is bump them with your knee. Simple things like that.

If you’re in the kitchen cooking, and they’re in front of the fridge and you’ve got to get to it, don’t hop over or go around.
Simply nudge them with your toe and say, excuse me, and make them defer to you and move out of your space, so that you can go directly straight to the fridge,,

Lessons like this can help you organize your household. If you have multiple dogs, it may take some time doing it, but I can guarantee you the payoff will help you keep your sanity

That’s is for your Multiple Dog House Rules Playbook.

Now, what did you learn from this lesson and how can you put it to use in your household with your dogs?

How to Teach a Great Stay with Your Dog

Teaching A Great Stay – It’s an important command

You know, once your dog knows how to sit, there are three steps to teach your dog to stay in a sit. So, Keeper and I are going to show you those three steps. We’re going to use sit as the example. Take a look.

The Goal of Teaching Your Dog To Stay

Now, you always want to have a goal to work towards when you’re teaching your dog to stay in a stationary command like a sit. That’s really important. Don’t make it too long to begin with. Work in small increments, like 10, 15, 20 seconds, like that, and then build from there.

Teaching A Great Stay – Step One -Time

The very first step is to build time next to your dog. We’ll use five seconds or 10 seconds as our example.

Teaching a Great Stay – Step Two – Distance

Gradually add distance from your dog. Once your dog has a solid sit, and you’ve reached your goal, be it five or 10 seconds or even 20 seconds, then gradually begin to require that same time at a greater distance.

Teaching a Great Stay – Step Three – Distractions

Once you’ve achieved your distance, then the last thing, step number three, is to add distractions.

Those can be anything that are relevant to your environment. If you’re in the home, it’s got to be kids and stuff like that if you have kids.

If you don’t, it could be tennis balls, squeaky toys, anything that you can use to begin to distract your dog. Remember, when you’re working with distractions, always start with a lower distraction first and then build to a higher distraction later, once you’ve proofed your dog on the lower distractions.

https://www.petiquettedog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/SIT-Swiss-Army-Knife-of-Commands.jpg275183Jim Burwellhttp://www.petiquettedog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/jim_logo_nov2014_gold.pngJim Burwell2018-02-20 17:54:302018-02-20 17:54:30How to Teach A Great Stay

Dog Jumps On House Guests

Your 4 Step Plan for a Dog That Jumps

When you go to the door, have your jumping dog on a leash and just crack the door two inches to greet your visitor.

Let them know what you’re going to do, “I’m going to sit my dog. When I give you the signal come on in.”

Step 2

Next, take your dog out of the way and grab the collar to stabilize the dog, put your foot on the leash, and then invite your visitor in, “Come on in.”

Once they’re in, you shut the door and your visitor heads to your family room to be seated.

Step 3

Then you bring your jumping dog in, on leash, careful not to let them jump on the visitor.

Once again, foot on the leash, settle your dog, anchor with your other leg anchoring the foot on the leash. Just say, “Settle,” one time and your dog will settle down.

Step 4

Now he doesn’t know what you’re doing right now, because you’ve not done this to him before, so he’s a little confused. But you only say, “Settle,” once, then wait for him to figure it out, and he will.

He’ll get tired of being standing there with this snug leash on his collar. Then he’ll eventually settle down, and there he goes.

The Finale!

And that’s how you stop your dog’s jumping on visitors, using the settle command.

3 Tips to Stop Your Dog Pulling On Leash

Is your dog pulling on a leash? Well, here’s three tips that’ll help you solve that problem.

Stop Your Dog Pulling on leash Rule Number One: Have the right equipment.

Use a six foot leash, standard leash, no Flexi’s or anything like that, and either a gentle leader or an Easy Walk harness. These work best to stop your dog pulling on leash.

Here you see Keeper wearing an Easy Walk harness. That’s the easiest for me to handle him.

Stop Pulling on Leash Rule Number Two: Make left turns and circles.

Now I say left turns if your dog is on your left, this is my left, then you do left turns into your dog.

Left turns go back in the opposite direction and circles to the left, your herding your dog, keeping him on the inside like that as you make your turns and, or circles.

That’s critical. If you do the opposite direction, turn away from your dog, he is on the outside and has control.

When you turn into your dog, no matter whether it’s a right turn for you or a left turn for me, turn into your dog like that.

Now here’s the key with that, if you do it abruptly … The quicker you do it, the more he pays attention to you.

It’s almost like you forgot to signal your turn and already starts staying back a little bit so he can kind of watch you, so that’s important.

Okay, so left turns and circles. Okay, and I do the circles if I have a dog that’s really trying to pull out on a leash quite a bit,

then I’ll just do some two or three circles and then do a straight line for about four to five steps and then I’ll do a left turn again into my dog.

Dog Pulling On Leash Rule Number Three: Frequent sits on your walks.

What we’re talking about here folks is to be able to stop your straight-line walking, because it creates the problems that you’re having. Instead, do your left turns in circles, now introduce your frequent sits on your straightaways.

You walk straight, four to six paces and you sit your dog. Walk another four to six paces, sit your dog.

Four to six paces, sit your dog. Four to six paces, make a left turn, come back, sit your dog, you see what I’m getting at?

Now your dog is paying attention. If he’s paying attention to you, he’s not pulling.

Okay so, it just makes sense to do those second and third tips separately and then combine them together so that you have a really enjoyable and meaningful walk with your dog where he’s paying attention to you on the walk.

Now, once you have your dogs attention with your left turns, circles, and sits, resume your normal dog walks and put your new strategies into place if your dog starts to pull again.

Just make it quick and abrupt to regain your dogs attention. I’m Jim Burwell. Keeper and I can still be found at petiquettedog.com.

How To Use Your Dog’s Sit Command

Teaching sit is an important safety tactic.

Let’s say your dog has a tendency to run out the front door: If your dog has an excellent response to the sit command, as he starts to bolt you simply say sit in a firm voice, no yelling, but louder than normal conversation. If you’ve trained him right, his butt will hit the ground and he will stop. This keeps him from running after something and bolting out into the street where he might get hurt.

Impress Your In-laws with how well you dog will sit

Does this sound familiar? You have company coming over and well, they’re not crazy about dogs. They ring the bell, you go to the door with your dog by your side and you say SIT. You open the door and there’s your company and there YOU are, with a smile and a perfectly obedient dog doing a beautiful sit – right by your side.

It’s A Dogs Way Of Saying Please

It is also a great way to train your dog to give you this command, to simply ask you for things. Some examples are below

He wants to go outside, he gives you a good sit first.

He wants up on the couch he simply gives you a good sit first.

The ways to use the SIT command are endless. In fact, tell me below some of the way you use sit to get a great dog!

Have a Bored Dog? This May Be Creating Behavior Problems

In many cases a bored dog is very similar to a bored child. If you don’t fill that brain with good things to do and think about, both the child and the dog
will find things on their own to do to solve their boredom.

It truly does not take a lot of time or effort to turn your bored dog into a stress free, worn out wonderful dog again. We are very mindful of this with Keeper who is truly, to smart for his own good!

Find what your dog is naturally attracted to and is good at doing. Keeper is very athletic which is why most all of the videos he is in —he is Doing something that requires jumping, fetching, swimming etc.

Maybe your dog is not athletic. But take the time to watch your dog and see what “trips his trigger”. Maybe it’s searching for things. Play “find it” with him inside or out and hide his favorie toy or a high value food treat and tell him to go “find it!”

Maybe he likes to retrieve. Take the time to know your dog and what lights him up. You’ll be glad you did. Go from a bored dog to a “DOG WONDER”!